C. Von Hassett — Awareness, Death and the Practice of the Pause

Writer and longtime meditation practitioner C. Von Hassett joins Hilary Sloane for a wide-ranging conversation about awareness, fear, death, meditation, and learning to be present in an increasingly distracted world.

Hassett has practiced Dzogchen, a Tibetan contemplative tradition, for more than thirty-five years. From his home in Rimrock near Pioneertown, California, he now devotes much of his life to meditation and contemplative practice.

The conversation moves through his childhood in the San Fernando Valley, his early love of literature, years in Los Angeles and New York, teaching, writing, and the books and teachers that eventually led him to Dzogchen.

Chris and Hilary also explore what spiritual practice looks like in ordinary life: watching the mind, living with fear, finding stillness in a city, growing older, making room for death, and discovering the extraordinary possibilities contained in something as simple as a pause.

They also discuss the practical side of choosing a contemplative life: Chris’s decision to step away from much of contemporary media, his relationship with his wife, Rachel Reid Wilkie, and his writing on meditation and end-of-life practice.

C. Von Hassett is the author of Entering the Mind, The Boundary Stone, and Awakening in the End. Links to the books are here.

Driftwood Conversations is hosted by Hilary Sloane.